Vina Fay Wray was a Canadian/American actress best remembered for starring as Ann Darrow in the 1933 film King Kong. Through an acting career that spanned nearly six decades, Wray attained international recognition as an actress in horror films. She has been dubbed one of the early "scream queens".
Henry Louis Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements. His satirical reporting on the Scopes Trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also gained him attention.
Jacob August Riis was a Danish-American social reformer, "muckraking" journalist and social documentary photographer. He contributed significantly to the cause of urban reform in America at the turn of the twentieth century. He is known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City; those impoverished New Yorkers were the subject of most of his prolific writings and photography. He endorsed the implementation of "model tenements" in New York with the help of humanitarian Lawrence Veiller. Additionally, as one of the most famous proponents of the newly practicable casual photography, he is considered one of the fathers of photography due to his very early adoption of flash.
The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES and sometimes referred to as Loisaida, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets.
The Dead Rabbits was the name of an Irish American criminal street gang active in Lower Manhattan in the 1830s to 1850s. The Dead Rabbits were so named after a dead rabbit was thrown into the center of the room during a gang meeting, prompting some members to treat this as an omen, withdraw, and form an independent gang. Their battle symbol was a dead rabbit on a pike. They often clashed with Nativist political groups who viewed Irish Catholics as a threatening and criminal subculture. The Dead Rabbits were given the nicknames the "Mulberry Boys" and the "Mulberry Street Boys" by the New York City Police Department because they were known to have operated along Mulberry Street in the Five Points.
How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890) is an early publication of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s. The photographs served as a basis for future "muckraking" journalism by exposing the slums to New York City's upper and middle classes. They inspired many reforms of working-class housing, both immediately after publication as well as making a lasting impact in today's society.
Mulberry Street is a principal thoroughfare in Lower Manhattan, New York City. It is historically associated with Italian-American culture and history, and in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the heart of Manhattan's Little Italy.
The Bowery is a street and neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. The street runs from Chatham Square at Park Row, Worth Street, and Mott Street in the south to Cooper Square at 4th Street in the north. The eponymous neighborhood runs roughly from the Bowery east to Allen Street and First Avenue, and from Canal Street north to Cooper Square/East Fourth Street. The neighborhood roughly overlaps with Little Australia. To the south is Chinatown, to the east are the Lower East Side and the East Village, and to the west are Little Italy and NoHo. It has historically been considered a part of the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Documentary photography usually refers to a popular form of photography used to chronicle events or environments both significant and relevant to history and historical events as well as everyday life. It is typically undertaken as professional photojournalism, or real life reportage, but it may also be an amateur, artistic, or academic pursuit.
Born Josua Hines better known as Josh Hines and "Big" Josh Hines was a gangster from the early part of the 20th century who was a member of the mid-late 19th century New York City Whyos street gang. Gang chroniclers Herbert Asbury and Lucy Sante credit Hines as being the first man to hold up a stuss parlor and regularly robbing gambling houses.
The Eastman Gang was the last of New York's street gangs which dominated the city's underworld during the late 1890s until the early 1910s. Along with the Five Points Gang under Italian-American Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli, best known as Paul Kelly, the Eastman gang succeeded the long dominant Whyos as the first non-Irish street gang to gain prominence in the underworld during the 1890s. Its rise marked the beginning of a forty to fifty-year period of strong Jewish-American influence within organized crime in New York City.
Doyers Street is a 200-foot-long (61 m) street in the Chinatown neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is one block long with a sharp bend in the middle. The street runs south and then southeast from Pell Street to the intersection of Bowery, Chatham Square, and Division Street. Doyers Street contains several restaurants, barber shops, and hair stylists, as well as the Chinatown branch of the United States Postal Service. The Nom Wah Tea Parlor opened at 13 Doyers Street in 1920, and is still in operation; other longstanding business include Ting's Gift Shop at 18 Doyers which opened in 1957.
John "Red Rocks" Farrell was an American criminal, thief and member of the Whyos, a prominent New York street gang during the mid-to late 19th century. One of the more colorful members of the gang at the height of its power, he spent nearly half his life in correctional institutions.
Patrick Conway, commonly known by his alias Patsy or Patsy Conroy, was an American burglar and river pirate. He was the founder and leader of the Patsy Conroy Gang, a gang of river pirates active on the New York waterfront in the old Fourth Ward and Corlears' Hook districts during the post-American Civil War era.
The Patsey Conroy Gang or Patsy Conroys were a group of river pirates active along the New York City waterfront of the old Fourth Ward during the post-American Civil War era. For nearly twenty years the Patsy Conroys dominated the area of Corlears' Hook and were one of the last major waterfront gangs to remain in the district prior to the formation of the George Gastlin's Steamboat Squad of New York City Police Department. The Patsey Conroy Gang abruptly disappeared when their leaders Patsy Conroy, Larry Griffin and Denny Brady were imprisoned in 1874.
Frank Stephenson was an American saloon keeper and underworld figure in New York City during the mid-to late 19th century. He was the owner of The Black and Tan, a popular Bowery basement bar located on Bleecker Street. It was one of the first saloons to cater to African-Americans and was a competitor against neighboring establishments such as Harry Hill's gambling resort and Billy McGlory's Armory Hall among others. He is also credited for opening the city's first and oldest "undisguised" gay bar, The Slide, also on Bleecker Street.
Mulberry Bend was an area surrounding a curve on Mulberry Street, in the Five Points neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. It is located in what is now Chinatown in Manhattan.
The Atlantic Guards were a 19th-century American street gang active in New York City from the 1840s to the 1860s. It was one of the original, and among the most important gangs of the early days of the Bowery, along with the Bowery Boys, American Guards, O'Connell Guards, and the True Blue Americans.
Eldridge Street is a street in Manhattan's Lower East Side and Chinatown, running from Houston Street south to East Broadway. Originally called Third Street according to the numbering system for the Delancey Farm Grid, it was named in 1817 for Lt. Joseph C. Eldridge, whose unit was ambushed by Indian allies of the British in Upper Canada during the War of 1812.
Alvin Fay Harlow was an American writer and biographer. A historian, Harlow's writing focused often on America infrastructure, including transportation and communication, and New York history. He was also biographer, serving as official biographer of Eddie Foy Sr. and Jefferson De Angelis. He also wrote hundreds of entries for the Dictionary of American Biography and Dictionary of American History. His style was described as "homespun" and "factual."
